


Communion Rite

by quiltedspacemittens



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens All Media Works
Genre: Catholicism, Ficlet, Other, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sacrilege, Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), heaps and heaps of it, more accurately the catholic liturgy of the eucharist, pls don't excommunicate me i'm trying my best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25715017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiltedspacemittens/pseuds/quiltedspacemittens
Summary: This is my body, given up for you.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 25
Collections: Ineffable Quiltedspaceficlets, Name That Author Round Six





	Communion Rite

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the GO-Events server Name That Author Round 6.

There are still Easter lilies on the altar, catechumen ripples on the holy water font. Votive candles lit in every corner, lingering prayers begged of God hours ago.

Crowley enters through the front door, crosses under the saint-lined lintel. He stands on unguarded feet, wings folded away. Here is a brazen serpent, drawing out the venom from the afflicted.

He stood once with Aziraphale among the wreckage of a flood. A soggy and desolate world to be rebuilt, the earth damp and pliable. Mud shaped into bricks with human hands, abandoned to dry. Forty days and forty nights in the desert. God, too, had left them, forgetting Her rainbow, a few of Her birds. Did She leave Her clay-mold too? Her potter’s wheel? Ground and man and being, drawn from the same rain puddle. Automatons deserted like sandbox toys.

The humans did not like that God had gone off without them. They built a city in the sky, brick and mortar, stone and bitumen. They built a tower that lifted high its head, so they could call upon God at home. God noticed the humans, climbing to Her, shoots straining to the sun. She choked the saplings, springing up before Her. She scattered them, pruned them down to size. She seized the words from their throats and confused them, that they might never trespass again.

Crowley passes through the narrow gate, a false cognate in all black. He is purged by the consecrated ground, embers smelting his feet. Each step an invocation, a litany. _This is my body, given up for you._ This is the desert, forty years wandering its howling wasteland.

There are bombs passing overhead, whistling like a strong driving wind. Crowley is not in the bombs, or the wind or the earthquake or the fire, not really. He is in the still, small voice, the tinny whisper. _Lift home?_ Aziraphale must strain his ears.

They are here in the rubble, Pentecost-wreathed, flames in the socket of every pew. They have come to worship, to hear the Word of the Lord in a language She did not speak. Crowley and Aziraphale spoke it once, to talk of oysters. It was just as sacred. _Do this in remembrance of me._

The ground is desecrated now. They have found the Promised Land, here on the handles of this black leather bag, milk and honey in Aziraphale’s holy and venerable hands. There is a time for scattering and a time for gathering. Babel is torn down, brick by brick, the mortar scraped away. But the words hold fast, reconstructed on these tongues of fire.

**Author's Note:**

> I decided against making footnotes because I didn't want to break up the text a whole bunch so if you're curious about a reference hit me up here or on [tumblr](https://theseedsofdoom.tumblr.com) and I will explain in excruciating detail.  
> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
